Discovered at the age of thirteen, now at seventeen she is one
of the new faces of the fashion world. And yet, with that beauty of
an "alien Laplander", she considers herself a normal teenager...
with a suitcase

Two months have passed since that cover (May's Vogue
Italia), but the excitement has still not died down in the
fashion world.

With Kirsi Pyrhönen the expression "a star is born" is
something more than a convenient cliché. Kirsi is a star
born seventeen years ago, and that's that. As for the
interplanetary aspect, that air of the alien Laplander who has just
fallen to Earth. Finnish, from near Helsinki, an older brother and
sister, two working parents - "my father is an engineer; my mother
works at a gas company" - her dog Akusti, a Swedish Vallhund,
Kirsi is a student with a suitcase. "I'm here at school for
just one more week, then the holidays begin: I still have
three years to go to finish high school".

Considering she is a teenager catapulted to the top of the
profession in just a few weeks and one of the new
faces to which the world will soon become accustomed, she
displays noteworthy realism. "I'm just a student who sometimes
takes a plane and goes to work, and has a great job".

A great job that she'll endeavour to keep doing. "It's what I've
always wanted to do. Becoming a model was never a plan,
even if I did want to do it when I was a child". She has
not found the fashion world to be very different from how she
imagined it. "Tougher and more tiring than I expected, that IS
true". And it is still too soon to talk about a life "after": "I
could remain in this world, but I also like design and furnishing.
I'll certainly do something creative. Only time will tell me
what".

Otherwise, her world is like that of any other teenager, with the
same pastimes - "I don't have a favourite band or DJ: I like
certain songs by Lady Gaga, MGMT, Lil Wayne,
Kanye West..." - and the same concerns of someone who will inherit
an ecologically semi-destroyed planet when she grows up. "We can
truly change things for the environment if we all do something,
even if it's small. And then I would like to help those who are in
desperate need".

These photos by Paolo Roversi place her in a
timeless classicity: it is no coincidence that she likes Audrey
Hepburn films and has Coco Chanel as a reference. She loves
vintage, "above all in summer. Here in the north, in winter you
need to cover up in something more modern and effective".

Among today's names, she likes Christopher Kane and Alexander Wang, designers for whom she
has paraded. "They're both young and their collections are
amazing. They have a style that's very close to my own tastes". For
now, the whirlwind of events that has made her teenage life so
crazy allows her little time, and the little there is she devotes
entirely "to friends, to family... and to food".

Ending up on that cover designed by Steven Meisel
- "there was a splendid atmosphere on the set; it was a very
beautiful shoot" - was perhaps predestined, ever since she
was discovered one day, at thirteen, shopping at Ikea together with
her mother. "I don't remember what we were buying", she
says, smiling, "probably nothing important". Perhaps she is right.
The "discovery" would have happened anyway, maybe in a lift or at a
bar. It is unlikely that such an "alien" beauty would have gone
unnoticed for long.

Yet that shopping session offered the opportunity for a career
that has a good chance of characterising the decades to come. Who
knows, maybe the Swedish colossus will ask her to be the face for
an ad campaign, to give her the opportunity to pay them back.